Ulster government plan hits snag over deadline

March 25, 2007|By Tom Hundley, Tribune foreign correspondent

LONDON — Rev. Ian Paisley's hard-line Protestant party says it is willing to consider joining a power-sharing government with Northern Ireland's Catholics, but it rejected the Monday deadline set by Britain and Ireland.

More than 100 members of Paisley's Democratic Unionist Party voted overwhelmingly Saturday to accept in principle a power-sharing deal with Sinn Fein, the leading Roman Catholic party, but Paisley said his party would not be pressured into joining any government before it is ready.

"The Ulster people will be persuaded, they will not be driven," Paisley told reporters after the DUP's meeting.

Sources quoted by the British media said the DUP wants the deadline pushed back six to eight weeks.

The decision sets the stage for a showdown with Prime Minister Tony Blair's government, which insists that its Monday midnight deadline is firm and that if the DUP and Sinn Fein fail to form a government by that time, it will bring down the curtain on self-rule in Northern Ireland.

Peter Hain, Britain's Northern Ireland secretary, said the deadline is "cast in stone."

"I have not taken the stance I have taken without clearing my lines with the prime minister. He is not coming back for second helpings, and neither am I," he told reporters last week. "I have not played it as hard as I have to end up with no credibility."

If no agreement is reached by Monday, Hain says that Britain will shut down the Northern Ireland assembly, stop paying the salaries of its elected politicians and resume direct rule from London with an enhanced role for Dublin in the province's affairs. Northern Ireland also would miss out on a $70 billion aid package.

The assembly was suspended in 2002 after the discovery of a suspected IRA spy ring inside the Stormont government complex. The spy charges were dropped in 2005.

Elections for a new assembly earlier this month resulted in clear-cut victories for both the DUP and Sinn Fein. The vote was widely interpreted as a mandate for the two rivals to set aside their enmity and share power under terms outlined in the 1998 Good Friday peace agreement.

Sinn Fein President Gerry Adams said Saturday that the DUP's reluctance to accept the Monday deadline would "frustrate the will of the electorate."

Paisley, 80, who would become first minister in a power-sharing government, declined to discuss the details of his party's resolution but indicated that negotiations were continuing.